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Thursday, February 18, 2016

Girls Will Be Girls

Workin' the runway in a Rose original

Newsflash: boys and girls are different.

I'm not talking just in the anatomy sense, I'm talking in the everything sense. Obviously this is a generalization, but I have one boy and one girl and I can tell you without a doubt that while they are in certain ways very similar, they are vastly different in many others, and most of those ways are what I guess would be referred to as "gender stereotypes".

Before you get a bee in your bonnet about how gender is a social construct, and that this is all my fault, I just want to point out to you that the first gift I bought the Little Lady was a set of tools, so it's certainly not because I'm a Princess pusher. As you may recall I didn't even want a girl child - I'm much more comfortable with the boys and the trucks and the peen, if you will - so Rose's love of pink and obsession with carrying her baby doll everywhere wasn't something she learned from me. Let's be honest, it's not as though I'm the most nurturing of women.

The good news is that Rose happens to be a tough little cookie, and she can play trucks and fix sh*t with the big boys, so I'm not overly concerned about her expecting to be rescued by Prince Charming on his white horse someday. However, there is one way she's glaringly different from the Muffin Man: she is very particular about what she wears. Let me remind you that she is not even two, and she only speaks six words, but one of those words happens to be "shirt" and if you try to dress her in one that she doesn't like there will be Hell to pay. In fact, if you attempt to choose her clothing at all and then have the gall to try to put it on her, she will throw a tantrum like you have never seen. I'm already starting to get concerned about how she's going to react when she's 16 and I won't let her leave the house in a skirt that doesn't cover her lady parts; I'm pretty sure it's going to be ugly. Rose is so particular about what she wears every day that she has actually made me change her shirt because she didn't like how it looked with the leggings she chose.

I'm sure that some of it has to do with being in control, as it's developmentally appropriate for a child of her age to want to have control over her own life, but there's more to it than that. She actually takes the time to put together outfits. She looks through everything in her drawers, peruses her closet, and then decides what she thinks will look best together. I'm hoping that her fashion sense hasn't fully developed yet, as I don't think that Anna Wintour would look too kindly on the two different socks she chose this morning, but a few years of a Teen Vogue subscription should straighten her out. Noah, on the other hand, could care less about his attire. He has a favorite red shirt with a dinosaur on it (that you've probably seen several times this week if you follow me on Instagram), but if his clothes are comfortable, he really doesn't give a crap. I could put the kid in a paper bag and as long as it didn't have tags that were itching him and he could easily take it off to pee, he would happily wear it to school.

On the one hand, Rose's obsession is a real pain in the ass, especially when we're running late and she can't decide between the blue check shirt or the orange striped one, but on the other hand, I'm kind of excited to have a clotheshorse for a daughter, because I'll save a lot of money if I have my own in-home personal stylist.